World's Smallest

The Scrubba wash bag is a portable pocket-sized washing machine weighing 180 g (6.34 oz). The idea for the Scrubba came when inventor Ashley Newland was preparing to climb Mt Kilimanjaro. "I realized that I would only be able to take a few changes of clothing and would have to wash them regularly. While waterproof bags can be used to soak clothing, they really aren’t very efficient. It was then that I had the revelation that washboards have been around for centuries and they work!" Ashley has now incorporated a flexible washboard into a sealable bag, and hopes to change the way travelers wash their clothes. Read More

The quest for more fuel-efficient vehicles has seen a shift from the gas-guzzling behemoths of yesteryear to smaller and smaller cars, such as the Volkswagen up!, Toyota iQ, and Tata Nano. The smallest currently in production is the smart fortwo that measures just 106.1 inches (269.5 cm) long and 61.4 inches (155.9 cm) wide. But for the world’s smallest ever production car you’d have to look back to the early 1960’s and the Peel P50, which measured just 54 inches (137 cm) long and 41 inches (104.1 cm) wide, and weighed 130 lb (59 kg). Now replicas of the P50 -and its bigger brother, the Peel Trident - are getting a limited production run and will be offered with a choice of gasoline or electric powerplants. Read More

If you’re impressed with how much data can be stored on your portable hard drive, well ... that’s nothing. Scientists have now created a functioning magnetic data storage unit that measures just 4 by 16 nanometers, uses 12 atoms per bit, and can store an entire byte (8 bits) on as little as 96 atoms – by contrast, a regular hard drive requires half a billion atoms for each byte. It was created by a team of scientists from IBM and the German Center for Free-Electron Laser Science (CFEL), which is a joint venture of the Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron DESY research center in Hamburg, the Max-Planck-Society and the University of Hamburg. Read More

At CES this week, Panasonic unveiled what it claims is the world's smallest, thinnest 4K2K-resolution, 20-inch IPS Alpha LCD panel. The prototype ultra-high definition monitor is only 3.5 millimeters thick, yet has about four times the resolution of a standard HDTV, at 3,840 x 2,160 pixels - this translates to approximately 8.29 million pixels in total, with the "world's highest pixel density of 216 pixels per inch." Read More

Just when you think that USB Flash storage can't possibly get any smaller, a company pops up with something so tiny that you're going to need the corded fob to make sure you don't lose it. Dutch promotional product manufacturer Deonet - maker of a diamond-studded Golden USB memory stick and an FSC-certified, maple-enclosed Eco Wood drive - has announced just such a portable storage solution, and is the latest to claim the title of the world's smallest USB stick. Read More

Although owners of the iPod Shuffle might have something to say about it, Singapore’s Bluetree Electronics has announced the launch of what it claims is “the smallest touch MP3 player in the world,” theKube2. The diminutive device has an aluminum body, runs for six hours on a one-hour charge of its lithium-polymer battery, and can store approximately 1,000 songs on its included 4GB microSD card. You can also buy replaceable skins for it, should shiny silver not be your thing. Read More

It sounds implausible, yet scientists have managed to create a functioning engine, analogous to a Stirling engine, just three micrometers wide and made of a single particle. The minuscule engine was created by Clemens Bechinger and Valentin Blickle at the University of Stuttgart, and though it has its quirks, the pair have apparently demonstrated the engine's ability to do work. Read More

Anyone who appreciates the precision art of engine design ought to get a kick out of this offering from a Spanish engineer named Patelo. Starting with hunks of aluminum, bronze and stainless steel, he spent over 1200 hours designing, milling, turning and drilling what he claims is "probably" the world's smallest V12 engine. Powered by compressed air injection (0.1kg/sq cm), this little marvel boasts a total displacement of 12 cubic centimeters from its twelve 11.3 mm diameter pistons and works like a charm. Best of all, you can see it come together in the detailed video that follows. Read More

Lenovo has unleashed a new device which falls into the HTPC or nettop PC category - the Windows 7-based IdeaCentre Q180. The book-sized computer will fit easily alongside any television set, where it can serve as an entertainment hub, given that it handles 1080p videos and optionally supports Blu-ray videos in 3D. Read More

We’ve seen some fairly small electric cars in recent years, such as those made by Tango, Think, Wheego, and of course, smart. All of those automobiles are absolute monsters, however, compared to what scientists from Swiss research group Empa have created. Working with colleagues at the Netherlands’ University of Groningen, they’ve built a one-of-a-kind electric car that measures approximately 4 x 2 nanometers. Read More